Should unit abilities be mostly free?

[Geo]

If a land unit has Air Superiority, and thereby gets named a "SAM" unit, does it have inferior land-to-land combat capability?  If it's inferior, then Air Superiority can be viewed as simply "weapon mode selection" and 0 cost is justified.  But if the land unit gets to have a big bonus against air and their land function is unharmed, then I think this should have the "costs extra on land" designation.

Anyone know the answer off the top of their head?  I haven't actually fought a land battle with "SAM" units in ages.

From top of my hat, I'd say land units with the SAM ability don't lose their intrinsic combat capability against other land units. It only receives the big bonus against air units.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

If a land unit has Air Superiority, and thereby gets named a "SAM" unit, does it have inferior land-to-land combat capability?  If it's inferior, then Air Superiority can be viewed as simply "weapon mode selection" and 0 cost is justified.  But if the land unit gets to have a big bonus against air and their land function is unharmed, then I think this should have the "costs extra on land" designation.

Anyone know the answer off the top of their head?  I haven't actually fought a land battle with "SAM" units in ages.

From top of my hat, I'd say land units with the SAM ability don't lose their intrinsic combat capability against other land units. It only receives the big bonus against air units.

Not a bonus but just an ability to attack needlejets. Since it is not a bonus taking ability slot (which is quite needed for land units) is good enough price already.

[bvanevery]

You are right but it is pretty damn difficult to justify the choice between then. I doubt even human can do that.

There's nothing wrong with choosing a cheaper probe team that's disposable for the purpose of stealing tech.  It's not like probe teams fail to steal techs.  They can sabotage stuff over and over, they can steal money, they can cause drone riots.

[Neil]

Crazy idea, but just putting out there: maybe a tiny number of select abilities could be free and automatically applied to units (without using an ability spot), upon researching the tech? For example, amphibious pods. Although conceptually I would prefer amphibious to be a non-free ability to add to units, considering the infrequent use and the trap it leaves for the AI (I've seen them build amphibious units but never seen an amphibious assault, so basically wasting resources), this could result in more amphibious attacks in the game and maybe at least shake things up a bit? I know this is probably a bad idea, but just a thought.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Good idea. "No slot" ability is near impossible to implement, though. People try to solve it other ways by giving AI predefined units with this ability, making it cheaper, etc.

[bvanevery]

I think people who want the "lots of stuff free" game are cheating themselves.  The real desire is for an AI that actually uses amphibious assaults properly.  That's somebody's programming work.  That kind of programming work could be a new 4X game, or someone's blood, sweat, and tears put into the Thinker, WTP, or OpenSMACX code bases.  Giving stuff away for free, is a much cheaper option, but it doesn't actually solve anything.  It just expresses a desire.

Modders are free to express their desires.  They won't achieve relevancy with other people though, unless they publish their work, and the work has enough 'substance' to it, that people wish to keep playing with that work.  Absent a serious level of deployment, it just becomes funzies game design experiment that uncommitted people quickly forget about.  Fine for someone's individual learning curve.  Like I can tell you that it's pointless going down this road, already been down roads like that in all kinds of other ways.  But me telling someone something, doesn't really amount to much.  People usually have to go try it all out for themselves.

Once upon a time I made a 'truck' unit, out of a speeder and a transport package.  That was pretty early on.  The AI had no idea how to use this unit.  So why should I put it in front of the human player, to encourage them to use this exploit?  I removed the predefined unit.  Over almost 4 years, I've had a number of things like that.  Nice ideas in theory, that suck when there's no AI that actually knows what to do with it.

[Neil]

I think people who want the "lots of stuff free" game are cheating themselves.  The real desire is for an AI that actually uses amphibious assaults properly.

Yeah, that's not a secret lol. It's a compromise of dream and reality.

[bvanevery]

If you really want it, why not put together a team of people to try to identify the marine assault stuff in the binary code?

The reason I don't volunteer to do it, is I'm trying to put my energy into making a commercially viable 4X TBS game.  I don't 'need' this feature badly enough in SMACX.

The problem is it's currently a mountain of difficulty.  If some people were able to identify the relevant part of the code, via some hard work, then that might reduce the problem to a hill of difficulty.

Seems like the question would be, "Why aren't the Marines getting onto the Transports?"  The stock binary makes Marines just fine.  To a fault, really.  They walk all over the place on land, and rarely are used in an appropriate place.

[Neil]

?

[EmpathCrawler]

It comes at the end of terraforming tech chain: Ecological Engineering -> Environmental Economics -> Advanced Ecological Engineering. Each one in this chain brings some advanced terraforming capabilities: condenser, borehole, echelon mirror, raise terrain, soil enricher. These advanced terraforming improvement are quite expensive. To the level that I always start experiencing shortage of my former fleet when I discover and start constructing them. Super former comes at exactly right time. It is not much needed before Ecological Engineering but need starts growing and reaches the peak demand at Advanced Ecological Engineering. Assuming average advanced terraforming takes 15-20 turns it'll take somewhere 100+ turns to just cover 10 base tiles with advanced improvement with two regular formers. This is too long and it is much much longer than the time between Ecological Engineering and Advanced Ecological Engineering. Besides, there is endless war that requires to restore destroyed improvements around your bases then around captured bases then to build tubes all the way, etc. I don't quite understand why you state all terraforming has already been completed? Did it actually happened in your games all the time?

Everything above actually demands immediate former fleet upgrade to super formers. Moreover it saves on support. So there is no question whether to build or not to build it. It is always to build. That how useful it is. From that point of view - yes, it makes sense to make it free as everybody will be using it anyway. I guess increase in price is just a tribute to higher production power at the time.

I didn't "state all terraforming has already been completed". It's puzzling to me why you rephrase generalities I say into absolute black-and-white statements like that.

Anyway if you scroll down this page I'll link below, there's a very good explanation about why Super Formers aren't so super. There just isn't enough time in the game to make their Superness pay off. You've probably made much of your infrastructure (much, not all terraforming) with the standard Formers by the time you unlock the ability.

http://dos486.com/alpha/sparta/page2.shtml

Do you not build at least one former per base? Early on I only do some quick rolling tile improvement or forest planting, then I send the former from its home base on to the next base where it helps that new base's former. By the time my initial expansion is done, I have a horde of Formers that can backtrack and set everything up for a pop boom or growth to hab limits. When the advanced improvements get unlocked, I'll have enough to stack them for rapid construction. It's not like I'm building boreholes and condensers in every tile.

When I get Super Formers, I typically will build rovers for extra flexibility and then use a small number of those to keep up with damage or quick tweaks. It's more of a convenience for me than anything.

Contrary to say such no brainer as super former, this one is a choice player has to make: use it facing large number of opponent air units or not, otherwise. Therefore, it should cost something to support this choice. Should make unit more economically effective against air units but less against others. Vanilla actually follows this guideline pretty nicely pricing such abilities at 25-50% of their effect.

I would say the cost (both in construction and support, ha ha) of having to build different units for different purposes is the cost. This could help the AI. The AI can't execute massive blitzs, we can. It'd be nice if they had more incentive to just build all those units so at least we'll get tripped up if they fill their bases with ECM and AAA garrisons without paying a premium. It doesn't matter much for humans because you probably have a lean defense outside of borders with your nastiest neighbors, right?

[EmpathCrawler]

Crazy idea, but just putting out there: maybe a tiny number of select abilities could be free and automatically applied to units (without using an ability spot), upon researching the tech? For example, amphibious pods. Although conceptually I would prefer amphibious to be a non-free ability to add to units, considering the infrequent use and the trap it leaves for the AI (I've seen them build amphibious units but never seen an amphibious assault, so basically wasting resources), this could result in more amphibious attacks in the game and maybe at least shake things up a bit? I know this is probably a bad idea, but just a thought.

I mean one of my fantasies is to just add free Clean Reactors to every faction's text file and abolish the SUPPORT mechanic from the game, lol.

[Geo]

The first is I thought entirely possible.
With the second one, you could start retiring the support bonuses from Social Engineering and faction files. That should only leave the odd support bonus one or the other Secret Project gives.

[bvanevery]

Look do you people even play other people's mods, before you set about reinventing the wheel?  Do you ever think of reading their design notes and CHANGELOGs?

I dealt with the value and non-value of SUPPORT a long time ago.  Clean Reactors are available from the beginning of the game.  The have cost=2, it's not a free lunch.  You make a production speed vs. maintenance cost tradeoff, as to whether you want it.  Socialist is the only SE choice in my mod that has a +1 SUPPORT bonus.  2 factions have a +1 SUPPORT bonus: the Believers and the Morganites.  And that's it.

SUPPORT only matters in the early to early mid game.  That's when minerals outputs for cities are fairly low, and the maintenance cost of units you're supporting seriously impacts your productivity.  Once factions start making Genejack Factories etc, it doesn't matter anymore.  That's why I moved Clean Reactor to the beginning of the game.  In the original game, it has no benefit by the time it appears in the game.  And, it helps with the AI's early game stupidity about SUPPORT.

[bvanevery]

Anyway if you scroll down this page I'll link below, there's a very good explanation about why Super Formers aren't so super. There just isn't enough time in the game to make their Superness pay off. You've probably made much of your infrastructure (much, not all terraforming) with the standard Formers by the time you unlock the ability.

http://dos486.com/alpha/sparta/page2.shtml

That's an awfully small map, that you're holding up as some kind of model of general play.  It's just not relevant to the game in general.  If you're on a bigger map, you're gonna spend more time building infrastructure before you go clobbering.

Do you even realize what an off-the-wall "oh you're done with Formers already" play bias that sounds like?  It's like we're playing completely different games.  Who knows, maybe we are.  Do you have any After Action Reports of your games?  Then we could at least evaluate "the play style where Formers aren't that relevant".

Most of the recent AARs on this site, I wrote them, so feel free to examine my use of Formers by way of comparison.  I will say, I rarely do Echelon Mirrors.  I almost never do Condensers, and I never do Thermal Boreholes.  Sometimes I drill Aquifers if I've got nothing better to do.  I don't raise terrain to try to "improve a hillside" because it's too random what happens.  I do tend to make Soil Enrichers eventually, but it's often a "nothing better to do" thing.

My primary terraforming philosophy is "forest and forget".  Other stuff is filling in the cracks, where forest isn't appropriate.  I build rail networks.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I didn't "state all terraforming has already been completed". It's puzzling to me why you rephrase generalities I say into absolute black-and-white statements like that.

Sorry, man. I was typing by memory. Here is your exact quote.

Super Formers come pretty late for their effect to have much of an impact. It's likely most of your terraforming has already been completed. Free.

I admit I have replaced "most" -> "all" but, I guess, it didn't change the statement.

I agree that horde of existing former makes building super former not so imperative. I would not argue about this any further as it is not too important for me. When do you think is a good time to unlock super former?